Our Work and Our Character
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Welcome to Gospel in Life. If you have a job, it's likely that you think about it. A lot. But how much have you thought about the biblical approach to your work? Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller shows us that the Bible has incredibly helpful and practical wisdom we can apply to the work we do. Wisdom you may find surprising, even life-changing. ♪

The scripture reading is taken from Ephesians 5, verse 21, and chapter 6, verses 5 through 9. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.

Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. This is God's word.

The sermons this fall have to do with the gospel in the world. What we're asking is, what happens when you take the gospel out of the private life and out of the church into the world? What happens? And one of the answers, which we're looking at last week and this week, is that the gospel affects how you do your work, how you do your job, how you pursue your vocation.

In this passage, we have Paul saying, if you are a believer in Christ, how does that affect your work? How does that affect your work if you're a worker? How does it affect your work if you're a manager? How does that affect your work? And that's what we're going to explore tonight. This particular passage is not so much a high, lofty preaching. It's more of a down-to-earth, practical teaching. It's not inspirational. It's more practical. And as a result, it's incredibly useful.

But if we're going to understand it, I think we need to do a little background work. Once we do a little bit of background work to understand, to help us, I think, put what is being said here into historical context, then we're going to see two principles and a power. In other words, background work, practical principle one, practical principle two, and the power to carry them out. Background, principle, principle, power. Background. Why do we do background? Well, when the modern reader...

starts a text and it says, slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear. That raises a few red flags. And of course, there are plenty of people who look at passages like that today and say, see, the Bible condones slavery. There was just an op-ed piece in the New York Times a week or so ago in which it said, well, of course, the New Testament condones slavery. Look, it says, slaves obey your masters. And even worse than that,

Back in the mid-1800s in the South, particularly in America, these texts were used to support slavery. They said, well, of course, look, it says slaves are a bigger master, so it's okay. There can't be anything wrong with it. So we have to do a little bit of background work really quickly to even read this and get anything out of it.

And any commentary you ever read, and commentaries are trying to help you understand a text of the Bible, and they try to put it in the historical, cultural context of the time so you understand whoever was writing it, what that person was saying, and it just helps you understand it better. Every commentary says when you read this passage, you need to keep two things in mind.

The first is that Paul, and if you read all of Ephesians, you'll see that Paul wrote this letter to address a group of Christians on Sunday morning when they're gathered for worship. And they were gathered in households. In fact, what you have in Ephesians 5 and 6 is what is called a household code.

Because it first describes it around Ephesians 5.22. It talks about husbands and wives live like this. Then it says parents and children live like this. And now it says slaves and masters live like this. And the reason Paul was doing that was because that was a household. Households were large and they had in them spouses, children, and domestic servants who lived in the household.

And so what Paul was actually doing was he was addressing households. He was addressing the extended family households of the day. And you can tell by reading the text that Paul was not saying this. He wasn't saying, let's get together as Christians and decide, what do we think of first century Greco-Roman cultural institutions?

What do we think of a church as a church about the social structures of society? No, he wasn't doing that. What he was actually saying is tomorrow morning on Monday, how will you live in those institutions in a way that's distinctive because you believe the gospel?

He was here to talk about how do you live in this society, not, well, what are we going to do about the institutions? That's just not what he's talking about. There's plenty of places in the Bible that talk about how do we look at social structures and how do we look at injustices in social institutions. But this is one of the places which Paul's not condoning slavery, but he's not criticizing. He's talking to people, how are you going to live tomorrow now that you're Christians?

So he's actually just not condoning slavery. He's really not addressing the institution. But here's the other thing that's very important. One of the questions always comes up. I'm reading a book by a Princeton professor, an African Princeton professor about moral revolutions, and there's a long chapter on the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in the 1830s. And he says what is pretty well known, that who led the charge for abolition? Quakers and evangelical Christians.

The evangelicals out of the Great Awakenings of the 18th century and the Quakers led the way and said, we have to abolish slavery. It's absolutely wrong. We've got to stop it. So the question is, if Christians rose up, you know, the last couple hundred years and said, we have to stop slavery, why didn't the early Christians rise up and said, we have to stop all slavery in the Greco-Roman world? And what the commentaries say is the answer is you have to understand how different slavery was. It was a very different institution.

I wasn't saying it was a good institution, but it was very different. And let me just, what do you think of when you think of slavery? Let me tell you what the situation was at the time. At that time, the servants that Paul was talking about, slavery was not based on race. Secondly, it was never permanent. It was about 10 or 15 years long. Thirdly, it wasn't based on kidnapping, systematic going out and catching people and then having them, you know, slaves for life.

Most slaves were captives from the wars. And if your country lost, you were a soldier, you were brought in to be a slave for a number of years, and that's the way it was done. Or indentured servanthood. So it wasn't race-based. It wasn't permanent.

It wasn't based on kidnapping. And slaves had rights. Did you know that at the time that Paul was writing, you could go to court against your master. You could make a complaint against your master for injustice. Slaves had rights. They actually could own property. They could actually own other slaves.

And then you begin to realize that not that it was a great institution, but it was a very different institution. It was a really quite more diverse and quite, in some ways, not as monolithic or as brutal as the slavery that Christians rose up and said, this has got to end. And as a result, Paul, on a Sunday, is not saying, how do we abolish something, which isn't probably what you and I are thinking of when you think of slavery anyway, but he's saying, how can you live in it? You got that?

And even though that institution, the Greco-Roman first century slavery, was nowhere near as monolithic and as brutal as the slavery became later, even so, I want to show you what F.F. Bruce, the great 20th century Bible scholar, said, that when you read what Paul says to masters and to servants in Ephesians, in Colossians, in Philemon, and other places, F.F. Bruce says, Paul brings us into an atmosphere...

in which the institution of slavery could only wilt and die. The attitudes that Paul demands of Christians, the attitudes that the gospel creates in Christians, means even that kind of very different sort of institution of slavery inside the Christian community just couldn't last. Paul set it up for failure. Paul set it up to wilt and die. And by the way, we know that it did.

Now, having said that, one more thing by way of background. I'm sorry, we've got to do that. I hate to take five minutes like this, but there we are. Because you can't get anything out of a text like this unless you deal with the historical and cultural difference. We're on the other side of the African slave trade, and therefore we can't possibly read this text the way the original people read it. But I'm trying to help you. However, what if somebody out there says, and you might say, okay, that's helpful. That was helpful.

But what relevance is instructions to first century Greco-Roman slaves to me? If the distance is that great, you're right. 2,000 years is a very great distance. But Paul's instructions to first century slaves are not relevant to me. Ah, but I'm here to say that's not true. Paul's instructions are relevant to you because they're to first century slaves. Back in the 70s, a man named Studs Terkel—I like that for a name—

wrote a great book called Working. It was a survey of work in America. It's way dated now, but it was really quite a well-written book. And in the introduction, he just interviewed people and talked about what is it like to work in America. Listen to this. Studs Terkel said this in the introduction. He says, this book, being about work, is by its very nature about violence to the spirit as well as to the body. It's about ulcers and

and accidents. It's about nervous breakdowns and kicking the dog. It's about, above all, daily humiliation. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us. What he's saying there, yeah, we don't have slavery in America, and yet some people always experience work as humiliating, grinding drudgery.

And so some people, that's all their work is. And all people sometimes experience work as that. Work is still hard. Work is terribly hard. In fact, work is always frustrating to a degree. And a lot of work is incredibly frustrating and humiliating and brutalizing. Work is about violence. Work is about accidents and ulcers. It's about frustration and kicking the dog. And we all know that. And you know that. Work is about overwork and being pressed and not making enough money even though you're working like crazy.

It's about humiliation. It's about frustration. Therefore...

What is Paul going to say that will help us have meaningful, satisfying work lives? It's a simple fact of history that the early church was filled with slaves and servants. They flooded in. Why? Because Paul and the gospel gave them something that enabled them, in spite of their humiliation, in spite of their drudgery, in spite of the grinding, crushing nature of their work, first century slaves...

The gospel gave them something that made their work life meaningful and satisfying and, you know, sustainable, bearable. And if he, what he had, if Paul's, you know, if Paul's prescription can help them, why couldn't it help you? Of course it can help you. This, what Paul is saying here is relevant to you because it was originally given to first century slaves and it worked. Okay, now what are those two things that Paul gives them?

Two incredibly important things that enabled people, even in that kind of work situation, to experience meaningful, satisfying, bearable work lives. And here's the first principle. Verse 7, serve wholeheartedly as serving the Lord. I know the English says serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord. But actually in the Greek it says serve wholeheartedly. When you're serving your masters, when you're at work, when you're working for your boss, it's actually working for the Lord.

All work is a calling. All work is a calling from the Lord. All work serves the Lord. A little background again. I told you, perhaps, did I just say something about this, that many Greek and Roman writers wrote books

household codes. That is, codes of conduct for spouses, for husbands and wives, for masters and servants, for parents and children, household codes. And that's what Paul's doing here. He actually has them in Ephesians. He has them in Timothy. He has them in Colossians. They're very well known. But what the commentators will tell you

is that most, when the Greek and Roman people addressed members of the household, they didn't even talk to the slaves. They addressed the masters. What's amazing here is Paul addresses the slaves. In fact, he addresses them first. In fact, he talks to them more than he talks to the masters. He's treating them with dignity. He's treating them as if they were responsible agents. See, the other writers said, well, why do you even talk to slaves? If you want to regulate slavery,

What happens in the household? You talk to the masters because the slaves just do what they're told. That's not how Paul sees it. Paul treats the slaves with dignity by even addressing them. Secondly, look at what he says to the masters. Do you realize how revolutionary this was? He says, and masters, treat your slaves in the same way. In the same way?

What do you mean the same way? Do you know what that means? Most commentators go crazy at that because you go, the same way as what? And you go back up into the verses before and what he's trying to say, with fear and respect. You must respect them. More than that, he says, do not threaten them. You know, the great Roman writer Seneca said, always treat your slaves as enemies.

That's all they know. Power, fear, always treat your slaves as enemies. And Paul says, if you're a master and you're a Christian, don't you dare, never threaten. And then he says, since you know that you are a slave too, and from God's point of view, you are an equal. That's what that all means. Look, it says, and know that he who is both their master and yours, see that's leveling the playing field,

You've got a master and your slaves got a master, and there is no favoritism with him. Literally, it says he is not a respecter of persons. And that was the Greek, there was an idiom that said, in God's eyes, masters, you are absolute equals with your servants. Now, this is revolutionary. This is crazy. This is the reason why F.F. Bruce said,

that the gospel brought people into a situation in which even that kind of moderate form of slavery could only wilt and die. It is so far from Seneca saying, treat your slaves as if they're enemies. It's so far from Aristotle, by the way, who says some people deserve to be slaves. Some people are born to be slaves. It's absolutely different.

But what does it mean? It's not just that people have dignity. It says when you serve wholeheartedly, and don't forget how menial these jobs were, how dirty these jobs were, how humiliating many of these jobs were, the drudgery of them, but you're serving the Lord. All work is a calling from God. Peter O'Brien, a commentator on Ephesians, says this. He says, when Paul says, do your work

Serving the Lord, this is what the commentator says, ultimately then, the distinction between the secular and the sacred breaks down. Every task, however, quote-unquote, secular, however, quote-unquote, menial, falls within the sphere of Christ's lordship. Martin Luther got a hold of this.

And it was really the other principle of the Reformation. Some of you may have, you know, if you know much about the Reformation where Martin Luther and some other reformers said, we're going to reform the church. Okay, what was the battle cry of the Reformation? Most of you probably have heard. It was, you're saved by faith and grace, not by works, not by good works. But that was only one of the battle cries. You know what the other battle cry was? It's what Luther called the priesthood of all believers. But what he meant was this. Luther was a monk.

And for years he'd been told that monks and nuns and priests, you know, people who took holy orders, they had a calling from God. They were called by God. Everybody else was just out there working. Everybody else was just doing profane kind of stuff. We are the ones who've been called by God. And then he read texts like this, and he says, wait a minute. This text means, Luther said in one of his famous passages, the milkmaid has his honorable calling as the priest and the preacher.

And why would that be? Now, I don't want to redo what we talked about last week, but last week we had a sermon on faith and work, and we looked at the goodness of creation in Genesis 1, and we said this, all work, all work,

is necessary for human flourishing. Sure, some work is lower skilled and doesn't get paid as much. Some work is higher skilled. And of course, in our worldly pecking order, this is good work, this is bad work, but not in God's. There is no favoritism with him. He is not a respecter of persons. And so we said last week, put it another way, unless somebody cleans the countertops in your apartment, you're going to die. It's called hygiene.

So either you have to sweep your floor, either you have to wash your sheets, either you have to clean the bathroom and clean, either you have to do all that nasty, dirty, low-skilled domestic work where you have to pay somebody else to do it. But don't you know, if it doesn't happen, you're going to die. Why? Because it's necessary for human thriving, for human life. And it doesn't pay very well, but it's crucial.

See, all the work is crucial, and therefore all work is a calling by God, from God, because God made this material world, and He made the human community, and He gave us our different gifts and abilities. And as a result, Luther said, all work is God's calling. It's estimated that most of us spend half of our waking hours at work. How does the wisdom of the Bible apply to our careers? In other words, how can our work connect with God's work, and how can our vocations be more missional?

In his book, Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller draws from decades of teaching on vocation and calling to show you how to find true joy in your work as you serve God and others. The book offers surprising insights into how a Christian perspective on work can serve as the foundation for a thriving career and a balanced personal life.

Every good endeavor is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's love with more people around the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now that's the first of the two practical principles, and I would say, I mean, it has very far-reaching, very far-reaching implications. Let me just give you a couple. One of them is this.

When you start to think of your work, whatever it is, not just as a way to make money, but as a calling by God, it makes you say, well, now, wait a minute. If it's really God calling me to do this, how am I going to do this? I'm going to do this differently. Am I not? Dorothy Sayers puts it like this, interestingly enough. In her little essay, Why Work?, she says...

In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the so-called secular vocation. The church has allowed, as a result, the secular work of the world, oh, pardon me, the church has allowed work and religion to become separate departments. And therefore, the church is astonished.

that work in the world has been turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and also is astonished that many have become uninterested in religion. Now listen to this. But is this astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion or a faith which has no concern for nine-tenths of his or her life? There's a question. What good is a faith? What good is a church? What good is a religion that can't tell you anything about except, here's how you have to live in here? What about the other nine-tenths of your life, which is your work?

There's no relevance, has no relevance within the church wonders because the church says, what's important is you come in here and you work in here and you do things in here. And instead of saying, but you need to learn how to do your work and how to see your work, whatever it is, as God's calling with dignity. And honestly, she's right about the church, by the way, she's right about the church. And one of the reasons we have the center for faith and work is we're trying to change that in our community.

Does the Bible, does Christian faith have anything to say about nine-tenths of your life? Yes. Why? Because that's God's call. And as soon as you start to conceive of it as God's call, you begin to think of it differently. One other quick thing, though, by the way, is if you believe this first principle that all work is God's call, watch how you treat people. R.C. Sproul, the minister, wrote a book some years ago called In Search of Dignity. And he was wrestling with these passages. You know,

This passage says all work is God's calling. Other passages say everybody is made in the image of God. Other passages say that God is a God who emptied himself of his glory to come down to earth and go to the cross. Other doctrines say you're saved by grace, not by work. So the doctrine that you're saved by grace, not by work, the doctrine that all work is a calling, whether it's housekeeping and domestic or investment banking or rocket science,

All work is God's call. Everybody's just a sinner saved by grace. There's no respecter of persons. We're all slaves to him. God himself does not hold on to his glory and his status, but empties himself and comes down and lives with the simple people. All these doctrines say, don't you dare think because you are a highly trained professional that somehow you're better than the doorman. Now you should treat them with less respect, like a piece of the furniture.

Is your theology affecting the way in which you, your understanding of all work being God's calling affecting the way you work like that? So R.C. Sproul was wrestling with this, and he went to see somebody at a hospital, and he realized as he was sitting there for a fairly long time and looking around, he realized that there was a caste system at the hospital. I'm not trying to pick on those of you in the medical profession, but here it is.

He says there were the top doctors, then there were the next doctors, then there were the residents, then there were the nurses, then there were the administrators, then there were certain staff, and finally there was housekeeping. And he realized there was a pecking order, and there was all sorts of ways in which people in the different castes let the people below them know they were below them.

At one point, he remembers seeing a nurse who had been talking to some doctors, and of course she was very attentive and very alert. And one second later, she walked down the hall, and a man who was coming up from housekeeping, he was pushing a cart filled with soiled linens, and he was pretty cheerful, and he looked at her. He raised his head to look at her. She lowered her eyes, looked at the floor, and walked right on by. Of course, I'm not going to deal with you. I know where you are. I'm in a different cast than you. And R.C. Sproul says, Oh, my word.

This is America, right? This isn't a place where we have a caste system. This isn't a place where we have masters and servants. We're all equal here. That's not how the human heart works. The human heart is filled with self-justification. The human heart is always trying to find a way of getting a leg up, unless the gospel of grace just bleaches that out of you. Have you taken to heart the fact that all work is dignity, all workers have dignity, all work is the calling of God? Second practical principle. It's this one.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Let me tell you how radical that is. Here, Paul is relativizing all human bosses, all human masters, all human careers. He's saying to the servants, I want you to show respect to

And I want you to do a good job for your master, but I don't want you to ever think that he's your real master. He's not your real master. He's only your earthly master. He's only a master in the earthly realm. He's not your real master. Now, how important is that? I'll tell you why. Look, when I was... One of the things that I'm sorry... You know what? I pity some of you younger people. You know why? Because when you have summers off from your school, you have what they call unpaid internships. Right?

When I was your age, we didn't have unpaid internships. If you were in school, which meant you were in a, you know, or graduate school, you were in the white-collar world. But in the summers, I worked in factories. That was the blue-collar world. And it was good for me because I noticed something. The problem in the white-collar world is overwork. Everybody's so anxious. Everybody's career-oriented. Everybody's trying to make it up. Everybody's pushing, you know, everybody's under such pressure. Overwork, overwork. Why? Because career means everything. It's our identity. We want to do well.

The problem in the factories is under work. I remember one summer, I'll never forget this, one summer, you know, I spent two or three days really, you know, the supervisor came and gave me something to do and I, you know, worked with all my might, you know, and did a good job. Third day, one of the regulars came and put his arm around me and said, son, you know, if you give the supervisor the impression that you can get that much work done in a day, it's going to make it very hard on those of us who are going to be here for 40 years. We're not going to let you do it like that.

You know, when you're 24 years old, I was pharisaical about it. And I said, how dare you? What's the matter with you people? This is what's wrong with this country. When I think about it, it made a certain amount of sense. But here's the problem. Paul is pointing this out. With blue-collar people, they don't particularly like the job as much. They very often despise their management. And the real problem is they only do what they have to do. They only work when their eye of the manager is upon them.

And what Paul comes along with, and he gives a revolutionary principle that says, I want you to work for Christ. I want you to work for the Lord. Those people are not your bosses. He's your boss. Now, what that does is two things. On the one hand, it destroys overwork. Oh, yes, it does. It destroys overwork. Down to verse 8, you know that the Lord will reward everyone for the good he does, whether it's he's slave or free. What's that mean?

If you do your work, you put in a good day's work, but people aren't noticing, or you're not having a breakthrough, or you're not being successful, or you're not getting the job you want, or you're not getting into the school you want, oh my goodness, who cares? All that matters is what Christ thinks. He's the only boss who's going to be around a million years from now. All the rest of them will be gone. All the professors will be gone. All the bosses will be gone. All the banks will be gone. All the bank accounts will be gone. He's the only one. Who cares what they think?

See? All that matters is what Jesus thinks. Just do your best and relax. And it's a remedy for overwork. But on the other hand, what about underwork? What about the people who despise their job or despise their boss and they're just doing what's necessary? You know what he's saying to them? He's saying, your real supervisor is always watching. And therefore, you must always do a good job. You must always work with all your might. You must always work wholeheartedly. And so this second principle, and that is...

don't look at your career as your real career. Don't look at your boss as your real boss. Do you remember the place where Jesus, it's in Luke chapter 5, where he says to the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, leave your nets and follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And I remember years ago when I read that, I remember thinking, okay, so what does this teach us? Oh, what it teaches us is that everybody should leave their jobs and go into mission work.

Once you believe in Jesus, I remember there was a time in which I wondered, was that what it was? No, no. Here's what he's saying. I think this is what he's saying. Of course, that's what happened to them. But I'd like you to read it like this. What he's saying is, I've got a fishing beyond fishing. He says to artists, I've got an art beyond art. He says to business people, I've got a business beyond business. He says, I want you to rest your heart in real wealth. I want you to rest your heart in real beauty. I want you to rest your heart in beauty.

I want you to rest your heart in me, and that will enable you to walk away sometimes from your nets. See, a lot of us, especially in the white-collar world, we can't walk away from our work to care for our families. We can't put our nets down in order to take time for our bodies and our souls.

We can't, we, we, we, well, because we, we, we've got to catch fish. And Jesus was saying, yeah, go ahead and catch fish. But first I want you to see that I've got a, there's a fishing beyond your fishing. There's an art beyond your art. There's a wealth beyond your wealth. And if you set your heart in that, if you rest your heart in me and you see, in other words, if I'm the real career, I'm the real master, I'm the real job, I'm the real supervisor, I'm the real manager.

I'm the only master. Don't let anything else master you or define you or drive you. Revolutionary. It means that all Christians, blue collar to white collar, most technically advanced to the simplest menial pushing of the broom, will always do work really hard and will always do work really well, but will not engage in overwork. If we understood this perfectly, we would be the most valuable workers in the world today.

Maybe we wouldn't be actually quite as productive. Maybe not quite as productive. I tell you, but in the long run we would be, by the way. John White, years ago I read a book by John White, who was a psychiatrist. And when he was studying to be a psychiatrist, he was a Christian, by the way, he wrote a book called The Fight. And in the book there was a chapter called Deliverance from Drudgery that had a big impact on me because he had this illustration.

He said he realized when he was studying that he was under such pressure to get good grades so he could get into the next level. And partly as a result of the fact that he was so frightened and it was so important to perform that he went into this cycle of procrastinate, then cram, procrastinate, then cram. And because he was so exhausted from the last cram, he just had to do something. He had to take off. He had to, you know...

Thank goodness he was, this was back before there were video games. I don't know what would have happened to him. But anyway, he had to take off. He had to do, you know, and then he would just take off and just not do anything until he got so far behind that he would cram and he would procrastinate, cram. One day he was reading this passage and he suddenly says, what if I studied not for the marks, but for the Lord? What if I stopped caring about my grades? What if I said, you know, I'm just going to, I want to master this material so I'll eventually be a good counselor for Christ. What

I'm not even going to care. I'm not going to worry about it. And you know what? He said it transformed the way in which he studied. No more procrastination and cramming. You know, he didn't put it off, and he took more breaks. And he says in the long run, he got worse grades.

No. In the short run, he got worse grades, and in the long run, he got far better grades because he was rested, because he was happy, and because he was not reading for what he needed to come up with on the test, but what he needed to know as a person who was going to function as a counselor in the world.

It transformed him, he said. He was ready for a breakdown. And I don't know how it's going to apply to you, but it will. I don't care what kind of work. I don't care where you are. It does apply. Now, lastly, very lastly, the Bible never actually tells you what to do without giving you the ability and power to do it. And it's locked in that first verse, which I had read.

Because before all the stuff about husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, you know, it says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now, the word reverence does not help much because the word reverence, you know, it sounds like Hallmark greeting card reverent. The actual Greek word is fear, but that doesn't help much either because when you and I hear the word fear, we think being frightened.

But in the Bible, the fear of God or the fear of Christ means joyful, astonished, awe, and wonder before him. So Psalm 130 verse 4 says, because you forgive me, I fear you. Did you hear that? When I read that verse years ago, suddenly I understood all the things the Bible was saying about the fear of God. And what it's saying is you need to be melted by

with spiritual understandings, joyful, astonished, wonder and awe before him. But in particular, how he what? Why would submitting to one another, serving one another, it's an amazing statement, masters serve your servants, servants serve your masters, because you're all serving him out of joyful wonder for how he served you. And this is the key.

If you want to have your work transformed, you have to realize that Jesus Christ served you by going to the cross. He served you by dying. And if you are melted by an awareness, if you're moved to the depths by how he served you by dying for you, that will make him truly your ultimate master and it will change the way in which you work. Let me show you an example. Tomorrow, are you going to get up and go to work for somebody that you despise? Somebody that's a fool?

Somebody that you say, you know, you just despise them. You just think they're fools and it's very hard to even go into work. How are you going to serve a fool? Easy. Think of what Jesus did. The Bible says Christ died for us while we were still his enemies. We weren't just fools who were enemies. He served us. He worked for us. He died for us. We were enemies. Now, if he could serve enemies, why in the world can't you go in and serve a fool? Because you say, well, you know what? My master served a fool. Me.

See, if you think the gospel, if you feel reverence for Christ, fear of Christ, joyful wonder before Christ submitting and Christ serving you, you'll be able to serve at work in a different way. Or on the other hand, what if your problem is not, you know, despising your job or despising thinking your boss is a fool? What if your whole problem is needing to please, needing to do well, you know, wanting to perform, wanting people to see? Look at Jesus Christ dying on the cross for you.

And just remember this. Jesus is the only master that will forgive you and die for you. Your career will not die for your sins. If you make your career your master and you fail your career, it will kill you. It will make you hate yourself. Call no one master but Christ. And the way to make sure your heart really sees Christ as your master and not your career is only to fill yourself with spiritual understandings of what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. There it is. Think on these things.

Let the gospel completely change your attitudes at work, your attitudes toward people under you, your attitudes toward people over you, your attitudes toward good managers, the attitudes toward bad managers, your attitudes toward your career. It changes everything. Think on these things. Let us pray. Our Father, this is a practical, almost simplistic set of principles that even a very simple person can understand.

And yet, we do find our work lives brutal, difficult, hard. Even those of us who've got jobs we love, it's running us into the ground. Many of us have jobs we can't stand, working for people we can't stand. And this tells us, my goodness, even if you're a first century slave, it's possible to serve you, to have a work life of meaningfulness and satisfaction. We pray, Lord, that you would teach us how to please you and not worry about anybody else.

And therefore, do good work, do excellent work, do wholehearted work, but never do overwork. We pray that you would show us how we can apply this to our lives by your Spirit. It's in Jesus' name we ask. Amen.

Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching challenged and encouraged you. We invite you to help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com.

Today's sermon was recorded in 2010. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. ♪